Home

You know what can make you feel like a total dick? Going on a beach vacation while your mom is in Hospice. Also? Cutting in line, getting caught looking up and down at someone's outfit, littering. But I only did one of those things (I didn't get caught so the outfit thing doesn't count)--I went on vacation while my mom is in Hospice and felt like a terrible daughter/human being.

I could go on and on about people telling me I need to take care of myself, that I deserve this vacation, etc. etc, but really. It didn't feel right, though nothing does right now. Blah blah, are you tired of me being sad? Because I am. So let's look at a few/too many photos from my vacation and pretend for a second that you can't feel my mopey dick face* on the other side of the camera**...

Joy. Someone has it.

Babe. My babe.

Looking in the right direction.

I paid her two Oreos to drape the kelp over herself, and it was worth every last trigyceride.

Happy boy.

If you're wondering why there are more photos of Zoey than Ozzy it's because Ozzy prefers to go nudey at the beach and I don't want to post pics of him in the altogether.

Love the confidence. Even if it only lasted until her first wipeout.

Cali Girl.

Eventually the feeling of being a total dick outweighed the warm water and I decided I couldn't stick my head (toes) in the sand any longer, so I flew home early while the rest of the family stayed for a few more days. I have a feeling it was just in time.

So if you were on Virgin America flight 958 this afternoon and were wondering who that woman was with her forehead pressed against the window crying, that was me. And I'm not a dick. But I was looking you up and down. To make up for it all, I left my Us Weekly in the seat pocket for you to read.

xo,
S

*Mopey dick. Heh heh. See what I did there?
**If you're my Facebook friend, let's also pretend you didn't already see all these pics on FB.

Starstuff

Everything I write here will be a lie. Mainly because nothing I write could come close to what is going on. How the breeze comes through the open window of my mom's Hospice room, or the sound of the church bells nearby...We are close to where it all began, my dad says, a few blocks from where my parents lived when they first moved to San Francisco 40+ years ago. He shows me the window of the room where I was conceived and I try to be an adult about it all. This being the Castro, later we see a naked man at the bus stop wearing a metallic gold sock on his penis and sneakers on his feet. The fog whips over the hill and it's cold. These things are all real, some of them tangible even, but still they can't be true.

They gave me a booklet. It's called Approaching the End of Life. I read it before bed and try to pretend I'm a Buddhist, that this is just a transition, that everything is changeable, appears and disappears. The cover of the booklet has a picture of sand, shells, a starfish, only now they are called seastars because they aren't fish and never were, though come to think of it, they aren't stars either, now are they? All of it lies, like this, what I'm writing. None of it can come close to what is really going on, the messages I have saved on my cell phone from my mom. Dozens of them--always Unknown Caller--knowing that there will soon be a time I won't be able to call her again, hear her voice, the way she says my name, how the thought of this makes me lose my breath. I guess that's the truth, or as close as I can get to one right now.

Quadratic Frustration

I like things to be just so. Like if I am hungry, I rate my hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, though the extremes never stay constant. How sad am I? On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 spilling over with joy and 10 soul crushing grief? I am an 8, the number somehow balancing right in my chest like that. For a creative who writes for a living and doodles on everything, I like to quantify my world. A 3 for sleepy, a 6 for thirsty, I am a 1 on a scale of understanding univariate polynomial equations of the second degree, 1 being I have no idea though I very much like saying the words.

Sexy graffiti if you ask me.

How long are we talking? I ask everyone what they think. Doctors, nurses, my dad, my brother. What do you think? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being writhing, crying in pain, my mom is now usually a 9. 4 for clarity, sometimes more, she has lost at least 30lbs. I run these numbers through my head like worry beads, 9, 4, divided by the square root of 82...there is no constant and I can't do the math. How long are we talking?

The oncologist says it could be weeks, it could be a year, but there is just no way. My mom is not eating. The oncologist also pauses a lot when he talks; I want to take his dry hands in mine so that maybe he will flip to the back of the book for the answer. I know this--the Rule of Threes: 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water, 3 minutes without air. More numbers yet still no one will tell me.

I need to know how to pace myself. Because sometimes math becomes a word problem when significant information is presented as text rather than mathematical notation. The age-old SAT question. How many days should I leave work at 4pm to go to the hospital to then rush home in time to put the kids to bed to then jump back on work email to make sure nothing falls behind? A few weeks, a year? When will the train reach the station? Otherwise written as: how long can I subsist as an 8, the inside of my chest surely bruised, and more importantly, how long must my mom be a 9?

Virginia Lakes (I Have No Idea Where I Was Relative to the Rest of the State of California)

We went camping. Yes, there was a cabin, but it was of the log variety, and it was small and smelled of wet, so don't judge. We went camping.

Ozzy very much welcomed the opportunity to be dirty. In fact, he actually spent the week in a cloud of fine dirt, like Pig-Pen from the Peanuts Gang.

This photo screams boy.
He spent hours throwing rocks into the creek while I tried very hard not to get all reflective about never the same river twice, time and change and dying, death--quick! Throw more rocks boy! Build a dam and make it stop!
Anyhoo.
Zoey threw a few rocks, too.

 Both my menfolk look delicious in the Great Outdoors...

We also visited a Ghost Town called Bodie and I couldn't help but think of The Brady Bunch, demented prospectors and socks. Please tell me you know what I'm talking about.

Looking a bit like a demented prospector himself...

Quite possibly our 2013 holiday card. Act surprised if you're on our list...

We saw a bear. I caught a fish. Ish. I threw it back. My feet are still grimy and Ozzy has a new word: ew.
We are back from camping.
xo,
S

Musical Interlude

Somewhere someone is having the best summer ever. That person is most definitely not yours truly, but that doesn't mean I don't blast this song and get down dancing silly with Zoey, Ozzy and Bryan at the end of the day.

 As an I guess I am, yeah, sure feminist and a mother, I am pretty positive I shouldn't like this song, the lyrics, and most certainly I should hate the video. The boobs! Those boobs. No, seriously. Those boobs. When Bryan asked I said yes, they are definitely fake, but I was just being horrible because I think they might be real. And I think they are amazing. See also: I love this song.

Anyway, carry on with your summer, fantastic or otherwise.
xo,
S

Lalalalalalalalala...

Let's not talk about it, ok? Instead let's buy stuff with a credit card on ModCloth. Let's eat a salted caramel cupcake for dinner and a red velvet cupcake for dessert. Let's read blogs, clean the house, pick at our pores, take an Excedrin PM and fall asleep reading that biography about Steve Jobs that everyone else read about two years ago, except, wait--in roughly 500 pages he dies of cancer, doesn't he? Fuck.

Not thinking about it is kind of like trying to smell the color 8 which is to say shut up already. Have you ever wondered if blind people can draw? I have. Like incessantly. Which is why I think this video is all sorts of riveting on a Wednesday night when I close my eyes and see too much.


xo,
S

This Is Happening (Not What You Think) (Unless You're Thinking of Pink Fluffy Unicorns)

Good god, people. Thank you for your comments and emails. Internet hugs are real, yo,' and if I sound flippant it's only because I don't know how else to act and thank you is not enough.

Cancer is still a total dick and I am still walking around wondering how I could possibly still need to buy more cat food when this is happening, but that's a lot of stills and let's face it--nothing stays still even when you are pretty sure your world has stopped. I asked my mom's oncologist the question we all see in movies, i.e. how much time, and he gave a very wide range of somewhere between I don't know and cover my ass. His ass. This sucks ass is pretty much the only thing we all know for sure. Titshitcocksucker, caught in a limbo of please, fuck no. I just might be in the anger stage of grief.

At the same time I have this song stuck in my head, something that Zoey showed me online, and I am trying very hard to make it my mantra seeing as how it makes as much sense as anything these days.

It's Monday morning. My mom is dying. There, I said it. Now go ahead and watch the video and try it with me. Pink fluffy unicorns, dancing on rainbows, pink fluffy unicorns dancing on, dancing on rainbows...

xo,
S

Sorry

I am trying so hard, you guys. To be happy, open, a picture full of smiles all hi! like this:

But I'm tired of trying when really I don't feel like smiling at all. When really all around me the world looks cross-eyed and sweaty, caught in mid-blink, imperfect and quite frankly fucked up like this:

The thing is, no one wants to read a blog that is relentlessly down. I know I don't. But I also don't want to read a blog that isn't honest. And honestly things are really sad and scary right now. My mom is not doing well, which is a euphemism for she's really not doing well. We got a PET scan back yesterday which showed that despite all the internal and external radiation, the chemo, the blood transfusions--that despite everything the tumor has grown and spread to lymph nodes. Which means that there is nothing left to do but manage the pain. Which means that--fuck. I'm fucking scared and cannot breathe and I have to make lunch for Zoey's camp tomorrow and write a press release and buy more milk and I love my mom so fucking much and when I whistle it sounds just like her.

So I don't know how to write here right now. I don't know how to do any of this.
xo,
S

p.s. You better believe I pressed this button over and over and over but I'm beginning to think it's just for fun. Fuck that.

Sunday Night BooHoos

Last week left me like this. A quality control fail. A lot bit off. (As opposed to a little.) It was the kind of week that left me limping, leading to a migraine on Saturday and to me buying a bottle of probiotic something called Colon Health on Sunday. Holy bifidobacterium, Batman. Pretty sure it came with a free subscription to AARP magazine and instant BFF-status with Jamie Lee Curtis.

But now it's Sunday night, and I am staring at a sippy cup someone left on the coffee table wondering if it's half full or half empty, or if it simply contains 50% of its capacity. Tomorrow is another day, and all that.

See also: why the fuck am I the only one who picks up the dirty sippy cups anyway?

xo,
S

This Is How You Win at Father's Day

One old white tee. A couple of fabric markers. Two matchbox cars driven by cute kids who adore their father.

Add in one tired dad who loves nothing more than lying down on the floor...

Best. Father's Day present. EVER.
(Got the idea from here.)

Happy Monday,
S

Cool Hand Dad

To my dad, who does not wear ties or watch sports or barbecue (he keeps books in his oven, for god's sakes; I am pretty sure the pilot has been turned off for years).
You are so much cooler than I will ever be...

Thanks for my dark sense of humor, sweet tooth and wit. I am forever proud to be your daughter.
Love,
Blam

Cognitive Dissonance*

(Mommy blog warning, bordering on Emo, not to be confused with Elmo...)

A week or so ago Zoey came home from school very upset, but did not want to tell me what happened. She said she had to write a book about it, so she did.

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Let me translate the first grade-ese:

The worst things that ever happened to me. 

Once when I was in EDS a baby reindeer ran across me, it was scared because someone was (???) it. I felt like I was going to cry. It was a baby reindeer. Two girls were chasing it trying to touch it but if they touched it its mom would smell you on it and not take care of it.

Spoiler alert: Apparently the baby deer got into the schoolyard and was all panicked, running itself into the chain link fence over and over and you're probably wondering why you're reading this.

I don't know what to tell you.

I don't know why anything and kind of feel like Zoey in that I don't want to talk about it. Maybe I also need to write a book about it. I mean, just the image of a deer young enough to still have spots bashing itself against a chain link fence makes me feel as if I've swallowed a loaf of dry bread.

A week or so ago my mom had internal radiation which I'm pretty sure they did in medieval times seeing as how the procedure consisted of doctors driving 24 thin metal rods into her vaginal walls and filling them with radioactive beads, the whole thing nailed to a mesh contraption to "keep it in place." So yeah, I thought of that baby deer bashing itself into the fence as I held my mom's hand. Have you ever seen your mom in excruciating pain? Writhing, lips shaking, she weighs maybe 100 lbs. No matter what anyone did, no one could show the baby deer where the gate was.

This is why I haven't blogged for awhile. Because everything is so freaking beautiful and sad and I am so goddamn lucky. It's summer and I should be posting more shit like this.

Frozen Sprite Gummy Bear popsicles. I'm totally making these this weekend.

xo,
S

*The discomfort experienced when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions. In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel "disequilibrium": frustration, hunger, dread, guilt, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, etc.

2

Dear Ozzy,

Today you are 2, which seems like a very small number for such a very big boy. You are in the 95th percentile for weight, 81st for height, 98th for head circumference and 172nd for spirit. I made up that last number, though I am 1000% sure your you-ness cannot be contained, even if you do have a big head. You are a boy who spills over, yogurt and bathwater, smashed blueberries that fall from your fingers splayed, laughter and funny faces, shrieks and sand and no as a question--always like that--rising. No?

There is something buoyant about you, something that dances behind your eyes. Oh, I know how cheesy that sounds, but it's true. You are all mirth, a bubbling up of possibility. Quite honestly, you are one of the funniest people I know even with your limited vocabulary. Here are some of your favorite things to say: Wake uh-up! Where'd it go? There it is! Hi guys! And somehow these are the funniest things anyone has ever said. Your facial expressions, hand gestures, even the way you walk is comedic--and I don't doubt it is all intentional either, how you do something and then look at us, expectant.

This is who you are at 2: a boy who runs straight for the water, who climbs anything and turns it all over, who jumps and blows kisses and denies ever going poop. Gucky? you say as you hand me things you do not want, yucky, and I take them and you lean into me like that and I cannot breathe you are so, so--you know that feeling when you are about to laugh? That bubble in your throat, how it swells before it bursts? This is how I love you, an absolute pure primitive joy of an ohmygod, this. You. Spilling over into my everything, my beautiful, blurry sweet boy.

Great big gulping gasps of zerberts on your belly. Thank you for everything that you are.
Love,
Mommy

1. 
7 days old.

For a Good Time, Call*

The words fall from my mouth like tacks. Fuckfacescumbag, I am going to cut off your balls and shove them down your throat until you choke, you little bitch...sometimes it comes out so hard and fast it doesn't even make sense. Dickfuckfartface, and then I feel a little silly, like someone shaken awake from a fugue state not knowing where I am or how I got there, speaking in tongues, so I push the button to disconnect, say one last fuck you to nobody.

They tried to scam my mom. "They" a non-entity of a well-known scam wherein someone calls you saying they know you bought pharmaceuticals online and there's a warrant for your arrest unless you pay a $3,000 fine to U.S. Customs via a wire transfer to the Dominican Republic. Which, dude, I know. But when my mom told them she has cancer and needs pain relief, something to sleep, they said they didn't care, that the DEA was on their way to her house right now. She was scared, and let's face it: I feel guilty. I can't do enough, be there enough, say the right thing in this very wrong situation. How dare they make her feel small? So now I call them.

Another "they" this time...They say that you should envision cancer as a thing, a bundle of all the negative, that with each radiation treatment and chemo it is blasted and shrunk, made impotent, but I have not been able to envision anything until now. This scam. This phone number that I call now, it is the cancer. Cancer with an accent  on the other end of an overseas VoIP phone number. Drug Enforcement Agency, he answers, always the same voice gravelly and garbled, and while I have reported the phone number to the real Department of Justice DEA, I also don't expect they will ever catch him. So I call. Sometimes a few times each day. I don't try to disguise my voice but he is too greedy to notice. Sometimes I threaten him, tell him he has fucked with the wrong family, as if we are some mafia familia and not just a bunch of watered down WASPS. Tell me, I ask, when I kill you, do you want to be listening to Metallica, or maybe some Hank Williams Jr.? Other times I thank him, tell him that I don't know what to do with this anger I have over my mom being so sick, that I am grateful that I can direct my hate, track him down...sometimes I don't know where to go with this and I sputter.... Most of the time, though, he asks for my name and phone number so he can have the DEA agent call me before they "reach my house." Veronica Swish, I say, Gail Brinerd, Jennifer Rosenstonenstein, and I give him the phone number to the city morgue, mortuaries across the country, the San Francisco DEA Office, the FBI's Fraud Unit, and then I hang up, picturing him standing in a hot kitchen somewhere calling.

Of course "they" also say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and there is nothing cold about this. My heart lurches each time I call; I am alive, rattled. I think about that possibly fake Buddha quote, "holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die," but I can't stop. I find myself thinking of other phone numbers I could have him call me back at, things I could say, as if I could change his mind, make him say sorry, make it stop. Because the thing with cancer is that it renders you irrelevant. None of this matters, nothing that came before and nothing that comes after. Cancer is a fake voice on an island halfway across the world via an ip address you cannot trace, and all I can do is set my phone to private and call back.


*Seriously. If anyone needs a good outlet for anger, I'll give you the number.

Wanna See the Ugliest Photo of Me Ever? (You Know You Do.)

You know that moment when you go to take a photo with your phone and your kids are in front of you doing something freakishly adorable, or maybe it's a stupid delicious salad, the image of which you must upload to Facebook immediately as proof that once upon a time a tomato glistened just so...so you click on the little camera icon all quick-like and HolyMotherofSweetJesusFuck! The camera is set on the reverse function and there's your big-pored, double-chinned shiny ass face staring up at you with that line between your brows and your eyes looking down all dumb and caught off-guard, you know? No? Just me? Well then.

Eff the reverse camera mode is all I have to say about that.

For the past 20 years there have been a dozen lost, mythical boxes from my childhood, boxes my mom said she had in storage somewhere. Photo albums and yearbooks, boxes of notes I passed in class, home movies, my prom dress, dried roses and issues of my high school newspaper...my brother and I were convinced it was all gone, the storage unit invoice lost, the contents auctioned off to a very disappointed man with a goatee on Storage Wars. Well slap my ass and call me Judy, as my mom has never said (but I have always thought she should say, seeing as how her name is actually Judy), but apparently the bill remained in good standing and I am now the proud owner of 12 boxes of my past, which is surprisingly like suddenly staring into a camera in reverse. For example, this gem:

HolyMotherofSweetJesusFuck! Note: the haircut that was supposed to resemble a photo of Famke Janssen that I tore out of a magazine and how it accentuates my most-decidedly non-Danish bone structure, the electric blue Space Invaders-meets-Bill Cosby sweater, the or-just-look-like-one Barbizon pose with arms crossed all cool-like, because nothing says nonchalance like standing like that.

It was 1986, the summer before 9th grade on a trip to North Carolina to visit family. My uncle had taken up photography so he took my picture, and the thing of it is, I remember feeling beautiful that day. In front of the camera in that horrible sweater with my bloated awful 13 year old face and puffy hair I remember thinking maybe I was a Danish Supermodel who just so happened to be having a modeling session photographed by her uncle in the basement of a tract home in North Carolina. Surely this happens.

I don't know why I am posting this, the ugliest photo of me ever taken...partly because it's funny, yes. Look how brave I am, posting this picture! I made it to the other side of that round face. But also because maybe there is something beautiful in the fact that I felt pretty then when I was really very not, when there was no reverse function on the camera and how I felt was dictated only by who I was in my head.

It's a 5.8.13 Party!!!!

If, like me, you have a thing for Fibonacci's Sequence, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, French, Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaking French, and poetry, then a.) it's pretty creepy how much we have in common, i.e. we are both pretentious assholes and should totally hang out, and b.) you should watch this video.

Apparently JGL made this short film* inspired by Fibonacci's Sequence, and although I don't quite see the connection other than the spiral of a snail**, I'll take it seeing as how today is Fibonacci's Sequence*** day and I don't know how else to celebrate. 5.8.13. You know? 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...the sequence wherein each subsequent number is the sum of the two previous numbers. The golden mean, the unfurling of a fern frond, nautilus shells, the flowering of an artichoke, the branching growth of bronchi in the lungs, pinecones and pineapples, the mathematical key to beauty. Don't worry...tomorrow I will be back to posting about farts and cancer, complete with pictures of my kids.


*How do I know this? Because I am friends with JGL†.

**The film is basically JGL reciting a poem by Jacques Prévert titled Chanson des Escargot Qui Vont à L'Enterrement, or The Song of the Snails Who Are Going to a Funeral.

***I just might explode into a pile of dork at 9:34 when it will be 5.8.13.21.34...dare I add :55 seconds?

†i.e. I "liked" him on Facebook, ok?

That.

This is a terrible picture taken at an unflattering angle in horrible light with my mom who is in immense pain--hence the heavy filter--but it's all I've got for now, so. This is how I am brave right now--posting this not kind photo--but that's about it.

There are many awkward-ities™ when your mom has cancer, such as when the doctor asks about her sex life with me right there, or when I mistakenly sit on one of her nephrostomy bags full of urine. But I never expected it to be so awkward when people ask how she is doing.

How's your mom?

People at work, friends, the guy at the corner store...seemingly innocuous, it comes from everywhere, and I know people mean well. Hell, if your mom was sick right now I would ask how she is doing. Actually, how is your mom?

What's awkward is that brief moment when I weigh the situation: the person asking, how they know my mom, where we are, how tired I am. How do I answer? And so it ranges from she's good, fine, you know...my voice trailing off hoping we can change the subject, to facts about the upcoming internal radiation, how medieval it sounds that they are going to surgically drill up to 24 needles into my mom's cervix and then blast them with radioactive material. No matter the degree of detail, inevitably I get a cocked head from the person who asks, eyes that grow just the teensiest bit bigger, lips pressed thin in sympathy, and then we both kind of nod our heads, like yeah. I know. Yeah. It's not a conversation that flows and certainly not one that can be backed away from gracefully.

Which leaves me with this post that I don't know how to end. Do I want people to stop asking me how my mom is doing? No. Really, please don't. This is happening and no matter where you run into me you can bet I am thinking about it. Just understand that sometimes I don't know how to answer, and that sometimes I just want to--

xo,
S